Hello Tim, Just throwing my opinion in - for what it is worth re, the bufferstop conundrum. In the series of photographs a rail-built buffer stop is consistently evident up until the 1960s' view, where the running board has been changed and moved further back from the main line. It does look like a ...

Hello Mike, Your average workbench time of 25-30 hours per week explains a lot. With such continuity of process and no distractions, it makes for greater efficiency. The spreadsheet approach sounds very organised. Like you, I have always taken process shots. After a year or two, I find it is useful ...

Right Howard. I shall study what you have said about the locking and hopefully my requirements are going to be simpler than those of Leeds City Wellington! Still lots to do before the locking goes on the frame. In an earlier post you aked how I was getting on with the crossheads and cam plates. Well...

Hello Howard. The tray holes present now problems really and it is probably easier not to have to drill through the half etched parts of the trays. It certainly saves sixteen drilling operations! That diagram of yours looks incredibly complex to me and I have given up looking of the 'obvious' mistak...

Hello Mike. I have enjoyed looking through your latest posts. The T1 looks quite a bruiser. It struck me that the water capacity of the T1, with its must have been much greater than that of the A6. I suppose that water consumption was dictated by kind of work each class of engine was required to per...

That is mightily impressive Howard. Is this frame for a different layout to the 'Leeds City the Midland Side' magnum opus? That must have taken hours of filing and shaping by your work group to fashion all those levers. I was going to ask another thing: in your instructions, you specify taking the e...

Fitting Dinghams couplings to the Class 73 should have been a quick win. Well it was not quite like that. The 73's buffers have been set in the extended position, which was also to allow clearance for the coupling the lift without fouling the Pullman buffing plate. That did not prove to be the case,...

Here are a couple of photos of tappets. The first is as soldered and not finished in any way. I will fill the channel with solder, but the job looks quite neat as it is. IMG_8983 (2).JPG This close-up shows the extent of my folly with the file: There is 0.5 mm side play on the r/h tappet. The l/h ex...

Ah, I seem to have mis-read the instructions Howard! That quote about removing the etched edges refers only to the port openings. Never mind, there are a few spares, so I shall carry on and fill the edges of the remaining tappets with solder. The clearance of the tappets in the tray slots comes out ...

OK, perhaps this should be under the title 'Locking Frame Musings' but I have a query about tappets. I have now mass-produced all the tappets, sweating the two halves of each tappet together with no problems. Following the Locking Frame instructions on making the tappets on pages 9 and 10, the instr...

After an enforced spell of non-modelling, I have started work on the locking frame components, starting with the tappets. It is all going well so far. I have opted to go for the third method of assembly of the tappets, with the etched port marks on the inside. Some care was needed to ensure that the...

Well, Howard, that is about 100 times faster than I managed to achieve and with seemingly very little effort. The work of a certain Uri Geller comes to mind... (Interesting choice of RM by the way. I suspect it is the one with an article scratchbuilding Bulleid 2 HAPs. The editors added some history...

Just to add that some of my S1 chairs came from an Exactoscale packet with an Epsom address, so they must be quite old. There was the same problem with threading the chairs and the curvature of the bases. Similarly, Exactoscale S1 chairs dating from 2015 and some Exactoscale S1 chairs bought from C&...

Hello David, I cannot say what steel bullhead rail is like to use - or the details of its dimensions. Are we are to assume that the steel rail is to the correct profile and still the chairs would not slide on? Could the steel rail have been made using the same tool as the Hi-nickel rail? Who knows? ...

Hello Mike, I would agree that that the A6 tank looks very pleasing on the eye. It must have been a major rebuilding program for the NER to re-configure the wheel arangement. I suppose in those days, a locomotive works took orders from the CME and just got on with it. My usual sphere is interest is ...

In reply to David Thorpe's post on chair deficiencies, I have not found any such thing! It is the particular make of bullhead rail that causes the 'curved base' effect. For me, both C&L and Exactoscale chairs have proven to be reliable products and they are not, not ,not the problem! In practice...

Re. the profile of the rail head as in the above pictures: Now, I am no engineer, but if Hi-nickel rail has a head profile which is incompatible with the profile of P4 wheels (i.e. too square-headed), would that not make a P4 profile wheel ride up on the root radius of its flange when the wheel is r...